Why ethics matter while practicing bhakti in today’s world, The Monk’s Podcast 127 with Rasamandala Prabhu

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna, Rasamundra Prabhu. Welcome to the Monks Podcast. So grateful to see you here.

Good to see you, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu. Thank you for inviting me to your Monks Podcast. Yes, so I remember the first time we met was in Mayapur when you took the teacher's training course for us.

And we had many good discussions after that, after the class, you gave me a good amount of time. And I had never, I had understood, at that time, I had found the philosophy to be very strikingly systematic. But the systematic educational approach to philosophy, I think you are one of the pioneers for that, in setting up the Vaishnava training and education, VT model.

And also, recently, I read your paper about, on ethics, which has been published in ISKCON communication journal. So it seems, in many ways, what is common is you are trying to do what Prabhupada said, churn the milk. The one is through education to go deeper into our scripture, and maybe the ethical subject, ethics is about going deeper into living properly in our lives.

And not just in terms of following four regular principles, but in general, in terms of how we conduct ourselves. So maybe you can give some background of how you chose this area of service, first education, and then now, discussing about ethics. I can briefly, yes.

I mean, for many years, I was doing various services, bouncing around a little bit. And it really wasn't my doing, it was providence, arranged, of course, by Lord Krishna. And in about 1989, my service, I had a service that went terribly wrong.

And I was feeling a little down, I'd lost quite a lot of money. And I ended up without a service, my own fault, undoubtedly. All this was in the UK? That was in the UK.

Yeah, I was in the UK. You're always in your interest, you're introduced in UK, and you're always been based in UK as such? Most of the time, I spent some time in Nairobi in East Africa. But I joined in Bhaktivedanta Manor in 1973, July 1973.

Okay. I did various services, including book distribution, I was head cook there for a while, I tried Pujari service for a little while. And I ended up doing Namahat preaching in the southwest of the UK.

As I say, that went wrong, through my own faults, no doubt. But at that time, my colleague and Godbrother Tribhuvanath, he said to me once, he said, Rasa Mandela, you're a bit of an egghead. You're in the wrong service, you should get into education.

So at that time, I did a mail out to some universities, and visited some academics. And we started a department in Bhaktivedanta Manor called ISKCON Educational Services. We had limited success.

But then I decided to put out a similar brochure that was targeting schools in the UK by schools. We don't mean higher education, as they indicate in America, schools is really reserved for primary and secondary education. So I did a mail out to schools.

We probably sent about two initially, almost 2000 brochures with a cover letter and a reply card. And we had a 10.6 reply rate, which meant that there were, I think about, I think we had about 170 schools who were interested in visits, either to the temple, or devotees visiting the school. So after that, my feet didn't touch the ground.

The program took off very, very quickly. My brother, sorry, yes. Did you have some background in education for you to choose this particular area, your parents or your family? Were you interested, especially in education before that? No, not specifically, no.

I mean, it's interesting. I've been reflecting on this recently, in thinking about the direction that ISKCON is going at the moment. In many ways, it's been very successful.

In other ways, I have certain concerns. And I was therefore reflecting on how I joined ISKCON. And I would describe myself not as a religious person, but more as a philosophical person who believes that there is an absolute truth.

And that absolute truth is actually personal rather than impersonal. So I'm coming, I mean, obviously, there are many personal issues in my becoming involved with ISKCON, and emotional issues and so on. And yet, I was somewhat grounded in a philosophical mindset.

I was at university, I was studying mathematics prior to my joining. And I was part of a philosophy club. So I had some latent interest in philosophy, more than perhaps education itself.

So I very much liked a thoughtful, critical approach, if you like, a reflective approach to faith commitment, and indeed, to Krishna consciousness. So not really any background in education. But then in 1995, I think the VTE, Vaishnav Training and Education was started by Shona Kurishi, who's now in Oxford and some other leading devotees, Sachinand Swami, Bhakti Vaibhava Swami and others.

And apologies to those I'm not mentioning, of course. VTE was started in 1992. And in 1995, it launched the first teacher training course.

And so my interest in education went from what religion if you like, if we can call Krishna consciousness a religion, can contribute to education, more to the role of education within a religious institution, namely ISKCON. So we launched TTC1 1995 in Radhadesh, Belgium. We did draw some expertise from someone who was grounded in Western ideas of education.

And indeed, we were criticized for bringing in ideas from the West Coast of America. In other words, very liberal ideas. And indeed, we may have we may have done.

And in fact, one of the, you could say, most profound pieces of knowledge I received was that in education, it's not just about knowledge, but anything we learn can be divided into three categories, namely knowledge, which is cognitive skills, which is applicative and values. So very simple classification of what we learn. And yet I found it extremely profound.

And for a while, I mean, when we actually a few of us went on a teacher training course, kindly given by then Shona Karish's father-in-law. And a few months later, we decided we were going to teach the course having attended one course. And Okay, so Shona Karish's father was, is not a devotee, he was a professional teacher who conducted the course.

He was actually more of a facilitator and helped facilitate group dynamics. But he was also expert not only in group dynamics, but in pedagogy and teaching as well. Okay, very expert gentleman, and I will always remain grateful to him.

So we then taught the course. I remember in the course, we were arguing what an aim and an objective is. And we were trying to, in other words, deeply understand what we were teaching.

And of course, we then started to look to our own tradition to see whether this model of knowledge, skills and values is applicable or endorsed within that tradition within the Chaitanya Vaishnav tradition or the broader Vedic tradition. And I specifically began to ask myself, are there various stages at which each of these are emphasized? Or do the three strands of learning run equally through the learning process from the beginning to the end? And we did develop with guidance from others, a model that explained our pedagogy, our science of learning and teaching. But what emerged was that values are actually perhaps most important, though they do coexist with spontaneous application and in full cognitive realization, being able to see the truth.

So in one sense, these are not just three categories, but values underlie the other two categories also. Absolutely, absolutely. And you can never divorce values from the process of knowledge.

OK. So we did develop a very, in some ways, quite simple framework, a kind of matrix. And I will send you that at some stage, which we developed.

Which suggests that actually, you start with information. You move to the three stages, you move to understanding and at the third stage, understanding or intellectual understanding becomes the full assimilation of knowledge. Insight, realization, where the knowledge becomes part of you.

Fascinating. If you don't mind, can I share something? Recently, I also started thinking about approaching spiritual teaching and studying and sharing spirituality in a particular way. So I came up with a threefold approach.

And now, when you're speaking this, it seems remarkably similar to what you're saying. So this is what I came up with the Venn diagram, that when I studied books on spirituality, in general, that are written, say bestselling books are not just bestselling, but those are considered good spiritual books in today's world. So I found that what we talk about as there could be these three broad categories.

There's textual spirituality is basically, what does the text teach? What does this verse mean? What are the different commentaries on this particular verse? What are the many meanings of this word? That's textual spirituality. Then there is, but generally, when we talk about applied spirituality, we talk about chanting the holy names or waking up in the morning, or doing deity worship. So that, I use the word traditional spirituality for that, in the sense that when people say, I want to become more spiritual, they are not really concerned about the particular doctrines, or even particular practices, they are concerned about how those will add value to their life.

That's the third quadrant. You know, how can I make my life more meaningful and purposeful? How can I learn to forgive? How can I connect with myself better? How can I be more centered? How can I become more resilient? How can I manage life's ups and downs with more steadiness? So that's what people generally have an idea when they say, I want to become more spiritual. So, in the sense, you could say that what is the textual is somewhat similar to knowledge.

And what we call as traditional, actually, it is meant to foster values. But just as we can have say ritual japa or ritual worship, then it becomes more like a skill than a transformative activity. Generally, those are not thought of exactly the same.

But sometimes somebody who is becomes very skilled in the ritual, is sometimes thought of as a very advanced devotee, say recite mantras very nicely, or even memorize a lot of verses and speak them, or do aarti in a very attractive, graceful way. I'm not criticizing any of these, these are wonderful things to do. But those are often equated with spiritual advancement, must this person must be a spiritually advanced person.

So in some ways, I had heard about knowledge, skill and values, but I didn't think about it, when I came up with this diagram. So currently, I am writing on the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam and designing courses from this application perspective. So in one sense, we feel it's similar.

I think it's similar, but somewhat different. I'd need to you need to give me a little more time to look at it. I'm sure.

Certainly, I mean, in terms of Africa, we actually identified the first stage, educational stage, with both factual knowledge, ABC 123, the name of Arjuna's bow. And, you know, just on memory, memorization, not actual knowledge, the second stage, knowledge becomes understanding. But the focus there, the focus there is on application.

Because as soon as you have some understanding, just a little bit of understanding, then you're going to apply it. And to apply knowledge, you need understanding. You need more than just what do you mean by application over here in this context? That that actually, when you go to any kind of educational institute, it has a practical purpose.

Okay, so but in terms of say, it's a con situation, if I understand that, I said the philosophical point, I understand that our essential identity is spiritual. So the application would be something like chanting or spending some time for a spiritual nourishment. Absolutely, in terms of bhakti yoga.

Yes. It, by the way, these three stages correspond, I suggest, to sambandha, abhidhaya and prayojana. Oh, really? So, okay, so in this case, in my diagram, these are three, you could say, parallel three circles are coexisting.

But if you consider them as someone that the abhidhaya prayojana, then they are, they could, it's like a staircase. More like from knowledge, you rise to the next level, that is understanding. And from there, you could rise to values.

Yes. And at the first stage, the emphasis is on knowledge, but just memorization. At that stage, values and practices are more or less latent, or embedded in one's background outside the educational forum, the classroom or the learning environment.

At the second stage, the emphasis moves to application, to skills. And the cognitive strand then becomes understanding. And at the third stage, that's the stage at which values are really stressed.

And at that point, application becomes spontaneous, rather than forced or disciplined. Okay. And at the same time, knowledge becomes, instead of intellectual understanding, full-blown realization.

One assimilates that knowledge, it becomes part of oneself. One becomes a devotee, or one becomes a teacher, or one becomes a lawyer, whatever it is. So the emphasis there is on being, which is to do with values, rather than doing or knowing.

But this is a complex subject, and perhaps it could be the subject for a podcast in its own right, actually. And I can send you that. But what is interesting to come back to our discussion is that, because the emphasis was on values, and which include moral values, then there is a naturally a huge component of not only character formation within that education, but morality itself.

We're raising questions. Yeah. If you correlate Sambandha, Abhidheya and Prayojan, generally Prayojan, we talk about love for Krishna.

So, and that is considered to be, say, something above morality, significantly above morality. But you're saying that love for Krishna would automatically include morality, or that is just one framework for placing this? Well, I mean, this framework itself is a pedagogical framework. I've got a slightly different idea of morality, though the two are connected.

But the question you raised is a pertinent one. Whether or not Krishna consciousness and the virtue of Brahma, if one can call it a virtue or a quality, or a value, whether that stands above morality. My take on this is that it's actually counterproductive to assume that all morality is material.

Because it tends to imply that in transcendence, there is a moral void. It becomes nihilistic. Beautiful.

Where is I? I never thought of it this way. You're taking a familiar point and spinning it differently. If you say that spirituality is above morality, that means we are not just elevating spirituality to a higher level.

We're actually dismissing morality. And in the process of dismissing morality, we are also actually, you could say, stripping spirituality of something vital. Absolutely.

That's an amazing way of looking at it. We have the danger of kind of knocking, of chipping away at the foundation or perhaps totally destroying the foundation of our spirituality. I do give the example, at times, of the yoga ladder, because in my studies, I am basing or trying to formulate a framework, a normative framework for a Chaitanya Vaishnav moral philosophy based on the yogas as specifically described, and particularly in the first six chapters in the Bhagavad Gita by Lord Krishna.

But one tendency I've noticed there, if we're not that mature in Krishna consciousness, I would suggest, is that we're kind of climbing up this ladder. And once we go to one step, we decry the lower step. And so we decide, yeah, let me burn.

So we burn the step beneath us. And we go to the next step, and we get out an axe, destroy the step beneath us. And eventually, as we get up the yoga ladder, we're destroying the ladder behind us.

And eventually, we're left hanging on to the top rung of bhakti yoga. But lo and behold, as we grasp it, the ladder disintegrates, and we fall. That's a very vivid metaphor.

It's, and sometimes, you know, we can even, actually, we may not even be going up the higher steps. We may simply be imagining that we are going up the higher steps, and we are below, and we are also, we are destroying the staircase. So not only will we go high and fall down, but we may actually stay down itself and imagine that we are up there.

Yeah, that's an interesting observation. We're not always up there, but we're imagining that we're up there. Yeah, that's.

So now, at one level, if we consider dharma is a very important part of the Vedic tradition. And while dharma can be translated in various ways, one of the, it can refer to innate nature, it can refer to duty. But dharma is also about ethics, about the right thing to do.

So it's curious that when we are practicing bhakti, sometimes we are decrying dharma, possibly because we consider bhakti to be the para dharma. But that doesn't seem to be very, like decrying dharma doesn't seem to be very much in conformity with even the tradition itself. Absolutely.

And you alluded to the verse in the first canto, second chapter. Is it verse nine? Six, I think. One, two, six.

Absolutely. Yeah. One, two, six.

Yes. So actually, this is an interesting observation. Of course, the word dharma is extremely rich.

It's a very rich concept, very, some philosophers would call it a very thick concept. And it can't really be translated so easily into English. There isn't a single word that actually suffices in translating the word dharma.

However, the question I may ask, and have asked in classes occasionally, is if we had to choose between two words, two English words to translate dharma, because both would be insufficient, but which is better? Would it be better to translate it as ethics? Or would it be better to translate it as religion? And that's the question I really would like to pose in a sense. And of course, keeping in mind that the word religion has different meanings, depending in which, you know, cultural setting one is answering that question. That's, yeah, it's, I think talking about it only as religion, it is definitely one translation is religion, but talking about only as religion, the word religion has so much baggage associated within today's world.

And if I think about it, where does the Gita actually use dharma as religion? I can't think of any usage. Of course, the way in which we use the word religion in today's world itself is maybe something not exactly similar to the Mahabharata's world. But yeah, dharma is the right thing to do.

That is, you know, I sometimes envision dharma as three levels, that there is the world we are living in right now, there is the our pure spiritual nature, and there is the process for rising to that spiritual nature. So dharma involves in one sense, three activities, three different activities. One that is our original nature.

Second is the set of duties that keep us in harmony with our present situation. And the third is the set of duties, set of activities that raise us from our present nature to the higher nature. So dharma is, so we could say dharma as nature is duty.

So dharma as nature is soul is a soul is a part of Krishna. But dharma as you could say sadhana is what will raise us up. But there is dharma within the world also, which we have to function to live harmoniously where we are.

And neglecting that is something that can have a lot of disastrous consequences. And sometimes when we either reduce dharma to only this, that it's I'm a soul and I'm a part of Krishna and I have nothing to do with this world, or dharma we reduce only to say, how we do our sadhana. Then we create disharmony at the level where we are living at.

Even if you think like, again, you're coming back to the staircase metaphor. It's very vivid. Yes, we are thinking of going up the staircase.

But we are not maintaining the staircase, which is there, and on which we are building up. So yes, we have to be very, very careful about not only drawing the previous steps of the yoga ladder, but trying to advance too quickly in spiritual life. Chalabhakti Siddhanta Saraswati said, one should never go to a tree and go to the top branches and forcibly take the unripe fruit from that tree.

There's a process of waiting for the fruit to ripen. Beautiful. What I'm loving is you're taking familiar metaphors and just giving a remarkably insightful perspective on them.

So we often talk about plucking the fruit, but we could pluck an unripe fruit and then it doesn't taste good for us and the fruit also gets wasted in a sense. So absolutely, we could extend that metaphor. Yes.

I mean, there are many quotes. And I mean, Chalabhakti Siddhanta Saraswati also makes it very, very clear that I'm trying to find the quote here. Yes, here it is.

And this is from Rupi Velasi's book on, I think it's called the Ray of Vishnu on Chalabhakti Siddhanta Saraswati. Page 88, where Chalabhakti Siddhanta Saraswati states, one hostile to morality or fallen from it can never be a spiritual man. And there are other quotes also.

If you bear with me a second, I'm going to read another one, because the claim is often made, and there's some justification to this, of course, is that morality is about right and wrong, good and evil, and Krishna consciousness transcends such dualities. And therefore, for that reason, it has nothing to do with morality. However, Srila Prabhupada addresses this question directly.

And if I can read this, yes, ethics form the basic principle of purification. We cannot be purified unless we know what is moral and what is immoral. And here, I'll just pause a second, but here he addresses the above duality issue.

Unfortunately, everything in this material world is more or less immoral. But still, we have to distinguish between good and bad. So quite often, we just focus on the fact that everything is immoral, or everything is immoral, and the good and bad difference, we minimize it a lot.

Certainly, yes, yes. So now, what do you think are the reasons for this? One of the things which, one of my thoughts, observation is that maybe Prabhupada presumed, you could say, a certain level of ethical common sense in the conduct of the devotees. And when he found it not there, so he was himself taken aback.

So for example, in the early days of our movement, or 1970s, when book distribution was at its peak, so even the devotee young mothers who had babies, they were told to just keep the baby with someone in the temple and go out and distribute books. And when Prabhupada came to know about that, Prabhupada said, how can you give up your own child to someone else to take care of your child? So in one sense, because within the temple environment, and within Prabhupada's emphasis, he did emphasize book distribution, he said, it will please me. But in the process of emphasizing that certain things which were assumed, which he thought that's just obvious, that was neglected or even rejected.

So was it because of say, we not sharing the same assumptions that actually Prabhupada presumed we would naturally consider as common sense? Or what are your thoughts about the reasons for this? That's a very good question. And I think probably the reasons are multiple, very often causes are not singular. Yes, perhaps Srila Prabhupada assumed that we would have some basic moral bearings.

I think also another thing, and I mentioned this in my article in the ICJ, is there was a tendency to abandon and encourage other devotees to jettison our current, you know, moral sensibilities, what I sometimes call our cultural capital, that had to be thrown out completely for us to adopt Krishna consciousness. Now one may argue that when one converts to a religion, if Krishna conscious can be described as a religion, then that process of jettisoning one's previous identity, and all the cultural baggage or cultural capital that goes with it is necessary. I'm not so sure on that.

I think we need to ask that question. But what happened is some of us, because we had some moral capital, let's say, um, we had a, you know, moral bearings, some sense of what is right and wrong. And we can assume that sometimes it's wrong, but maybe sometimes the Lord is giving us some direction from within as well.

After all, we came to Krishna consciousness through the direction of the Supersoul. One can't find one's Diksha Guru without the guidance of the Lord. So we were, we were kind of encouraged to abandon that.

I mean, in my own Krishna consciousness, after a few years, I started to ask myself, well, my intuition seems to be right, quite a lot of the time, even though I'm encouraged to be skeptical about my own thoughts, and my own apparent insights. And I think a degree of skepticism about our own perception of the world is very healthy. But also, we do actually have to develop some insight, some personal insights and Shastra Chakshus as we develop our own opinion, our subjective opinion has to become the same as Shastra.

Ultimately, that's the assimilation of knowledge. That's again, I like the emphasis you're putting it. It is not that Shastra has to become our opinion, you could say our opinion has to become Shastra.

Absolutely. Not just that, because this is a scripture, I accepted it is through my realization and internalization, I come to see how what Shastra is saying is true. Absolutely.

But simply by scriptural literacism, Krishna consciousness will not go on. Our tradition, and Shila Prabhupada mentions this in the first canto again, that actually, it's not so much as in the kind of Karmakanda tradition, Karma Yoga, where it's about just what you know, but it's based on realization. It's for that reason that actually, our tradition values, not just the Diksha Guru, but the line of knowledge, the line of wisdom and realization that comes through Diksha Guru.

So we have to go from being simply memorizing truth, which is very, very important, and parroting truth, if you like, which is also very important, to actually understanding first, to engaging with truth, to asking questions, not engaging in Niyamagraha, but asking what is the purpose of these rules and regulations? What is their goal? And so on. But beyond that second stage, which is critical and is more or less the Madhyamadhikari stage, according to Shila Bhaktivedanta Thakur, we have to go through that stage in order to reach virtue, and also to reach transcendental sentiment. If we don't go through that critical stage, our sentiment is likely to remain mundane.

That's amazing. That's so very quick point, which came to my mind here at this point. Let me… So in one sense, you're saying that if we say three stages, ritual, then you could say critical and then transcendental.

So if you could roughly put it like that, Kanishta, Madhyama and Uttama. So the… I think so. So the arising of questions by which, say, we will self-criticism of oneself instead of saying that I am so fallen, I am so fallen, that is parroted quite often.

But self-criticism in the overall sense of, am I actually understanding what is being taught? Am I actually speaking in a way that is beneficial to others? So when we start questioning certain things, that questioning certain, say, the negative word for this would be received truths. There is a said received truths, which I start questioning, that need not be an indication of a person becoming a doubter. That can actually be an indication of a person evolving.

Yeah, absolutely. It may involve doubt, but in a sense, doubt, expressing one's doubts is far more beneficial than concealing one's doubts. Yeah, but what if you're saying critical thinking is a part of the process from growing from, going through Madhyama, then if somebody never comes to that stage of critical thinking, then I don't think that necessarily means that a person doesn't come to Madhyama.

It could be that somebody is so simple hearted and lives in a protected environment that they may rise. But in today's world, for most people, to some extent, some level of critical thinking is required to avoid becoming misled, misleading others. Yeah, I mean, this is an important question about simplicity.

I'm not sure whether simplicity means not thinking. By the way, when I'm saying critical thought, I don't mean everyone should become an academic. That's not my purpose.

But there is also the process of heartfelt introspection that we go through, where we really ask those questions that are pertinent to our own lives and our own experiences. Okay. Even, you know, why am I suffering? Or just the question, I mean, you know, did I make a mistake there? Did I transgress moral norms there? Yeah, that question.

You know, that process of introspection, if you like, and contemplation, call it what you will. I am very sceptical as whether one can go from the stage of being sentimental, as a Kanishka, to the ultimate stage, without passing through the stage of being self-aware, self-critical, and asking questions. You know, we are, it may be that the heart ultimately rules the head.

And I think there's a strong case for bhakti, that once one has finished the bhakti, then the head will operate, will function properly as well. Hmm. There is a story, I'm not sure whether it's true, about Sir Walter Raleigh, who eventually lost his head.

Sir Walter Raleigh was, they claim that he brought tobacco from America. But he was a great favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Eventually he lost his head, I don't think it was to Elizabeth, excuse me, I'm not fully aware of the story. But this, but the story goes that when he came to the block to have his head chopped off, the axeman was very polite, the executioner was polite.

So he asked him, which way do you want to put your head? And apparently he replied, if my heart is looking in the right direction, it doesn't matter the direction of my head. Okay. I think that's, I think that's a profound truth.

When the heart is immersed in Krishna praying, then naturally everything else follows, we're complete. However, the danger is that if we put sentiment before reason, at the immature stage, we are in danger of receding into mundane sentiment rather than moving on. Therefore, if we have an anti-philosophical approach, let's put it like that, that may not be good for our spiritual life.

Yes, true. This is beautifully put. In this pandemic time, one thing struck me that in India, especially the second wave has been devastating and a lot of devotees or their relatives have lost close loved ones.

So many devotees asked me this question that, is there any section from scripture that you can recommend that we can read to gain some solace? So, they said that they asked some other devotees and again, no criticizing anyone, but as many said, read the Chitra Ketu pastime. Well, I mean, that is not, that is more about becoming detached. But here it is about, what say, in dealing with the grief, the loss, the sense of healing that is required.

Or if somebody might, one of the suggestions, I can read Garuda Purana description of the soul's journey after that. Now, that's quite a scary description. That is not at all consolatory.

So, you could say to some extent that what you said about heartfelt introspection could mean, okay, is this the right thing to speak or do at this point? Yes, we want to help people understand you're not the body or the soul, but critical thinking could also mean, is this the right? Yes, this is what I heard about this philosophy, but is this the right thing to speak now? So, that can also be a kind of critical thinking itself, isn't it? Because I am almost denying, minimizing or trivializing the humanity of other people. If I say just, why are you grieving? It's a sign of ignorance. It's a sign of illusion, a sign of attachment alone.

So, it's a great loss at a human level. So, would you also say that these are the similar lines, something like that, like premature? So, you said that we might reject this, we might, you talked about mundane. So, one is we might mistake our mundane sentiment to be spiritual or we might mistake all sentiment to be mundane.

Whereas, so both ways without reason, so we equate reason with introspection or as you said, heartfelt introspection. I think heartfelt introspection sounds a more comfortable word than critical thinking, because critical thinking has a little bit academic tone to it. And heartfelt, I think that is something which we are all encouraged to think deeply about what we are doing and where we are going.

Absolutely, I think we need to be aware of some of the generic differences between perhaps the Vedic and Vaishnav academic and educational traditions and the Western, without losing sight of the good and bad in both. So, I mean, by critical, obviously, one doesn't, in an academic sense, one is not meaning negative criticism. One is just meaning that one evaluates.

Right. Okay. Perhaps one of the biggest differences is that the object of knowledge within the Vaishnav and Vedic traditions is very much the self.

And therefore, the critique is directed largely towards oneself and not just towards others. So, when we evaluate, perhaps in many academic circles, one may be evaluating others, but it's very important to our tradition to primarily evaluate ourselves. And this is also pertinent to the idea of morality, because we might be keen, and we still do that in ISKCON, in evaluating the moral conduct of others.

But unless we have our own house in order, not just spiritually, but also morally, then our reaching out to others will be less effective. We have to have integrity to effectively spread Krishna consciousness. And integrity means it's that stage where our cognition, our words, our feelings, our whole being is aligned.

It's moving. It's what some have called flow. It's powerful.

I mean, I can speak. And very often, because I'm not mature, I say one thing, but do I really feel it? I do recall once, many years ago, giving a class speaking about the perils and evils of sense gratification. And as I was speaking, I just realized I don't really believe this in my heart.

I'm not fully convinced. So integrity means when one has full realization that one's thoughts, one's words, one's feelings, one's cognition are all moving in the same direction. They're aligned.

And therefore, it becomes powerful. If you listen to Srila Prabhupada when he speaks, he's very logical, by the way. I listen to Srila Prabhupada's lectures at least five days a week in the morning, always at the same time.

He's very logical. He's very critical in the sense that I'm saying, not negative critical, but he asks questions. Do I mean this? No, it doesn't mean this.

Listen to his, I'm listening at the moment to some talks in 1973, some of them here in London, at the Manor on the first 20, 30 verses of the Bhagavad Gita, explaining how we're not the body. Very precise. True.

Yeah. So very precise, but also feeling. So both ways, what you're saying is, yeah, actually Prabhupada's, very few people could actually accuse Prabhupada of being too sentimental in his presentation.

Prabhupada's quite analytical, logical, systematic. So in his, especially where he's addressing specific philosophical points, he does address them in his morning talks where he had, he would ask his devote disciples to play the devil's advocate. So he didn't drill in the reasoning faculty.

So by the reasoning faculty, not only will we recognize when there is too much emotion, but we might also be able to recognize when there is too little emotion also. Like as you might dehumanize all humans, emotion is mundane. So both extremes can be actually detected through this kind of self-critical analysis.

So this is one more point which when you're mentioning about the sentiment and so about sentiment and reason and emotion, actually, could it also be that we as devotees, at one level, there is a lot of guilt in our practice of bhakti. And considering that I'm not, guilt means I'm not waking up in the morning, my japa is not attentive, I am doing this, I am doing that. And if there is already some amount of guilt in a devotee's heart, and then on top of that, if I have to become ethically introspective, ethically aware, would that increase the burden of guilt? Because when you said earlier about, you know, being aware of one's own self-awareness, like we want self-realization, so most of the criticism should be towards the self.

But there is also the possibility that at one level, there could be too much burden of guilt. Well, I think so. I think that's an interesting question.

I mean, my, briefly, my conclusion is that actually discussing on the level of morality and values will actually help us in dealing with such issues. And one of the, and I've written about this in my recent essay in the ICJ, there is a challenge with, one of the big challenges is sexuality and maintaining celibacy. It's a subject that we, isn't much talked about, it needs to be talked about with discretion.

Okay. But my conclusion in the article is that actually, we need to know, we need to address the ethical issue of how much free will do we have and how much are our actions predetermined, determined by our nature. So this tension between free will and determinism, which is a long ongoing, a prolonged philosophical debate.

Yes, let me, I don't mind, I just like to understand the connection. So when you're, and I mentioned the point about guilt, that we are feeling guilty. So what you are saying is ethical awareness is not just awareness of, oh, I'm doing wrong, I'm doing wrong, but it's also ethical awareness is, okay, what level of right am I capable of doing right now? Am I presuming that I can just, if my ethical awareness simply becomes, oh, I did this wrong, I did this wrong, I did this wrong, and I keep beating myself up, then that is not actually the purpose of ethics.

It shouldn't add to the burden of guilt, but it should help us understand how to deal with the situation from where we are. Yeah, it may not be helpful. Too much guilt or shame, toxic shame can be unhelpful.

But coming back to ethics, we do need to ask the question, what am I capable and what am I not capable of? And I made the rather strong statement that some young men and young women are not capable of avoiding sex. And I stand by that. You could make it stronger.

Only some people are capable of avoiding, you could say. Yes, absolutely. And that means, but this insight is actually embodied in our tradition.

You get married. Yeah. And then it's fine.

But if you encourage, and sometimes more than encourage, I would say. Glamorize. Yeah, those, yeah, well, glamorize or, I mean, here's another philosophical misconception that developed in ISKCON.

The misconception was the Brahmacharya ashram is higher than the Grihastha ashram. Give me scriptural evidence for that. That's interesting.

It is actually the four vanas, sorry, the four ashrams, that the same metaphor is used for the four ashrams as for the four vanas. The legs, the belly, the arms and chest and the head. Is that used for ashrams also? I never heard of that.

It is. I don't have the reference. And excuse me, I should.

I'm aware. I can see if I can find it for you. But it is also used.

Yes. By the way. Yeah.

Okay. It makes sense. Grihasthas are like the belly.

They are providing the financial support for all the other ashrams. So, yeah. Yeah.

Does that make sense? By the way, I don't want to politicize this. Yeah, of course. But the way that the two, the Sanyasa ashram and the Brahmacharya ashram have been kind of conflated.

I think it's wrong. And therefore, one devotee who sadly passed away now through an accident once told me that when he announced that he was getting married, he called it coming out. He had to come out.

Just like in the West, people come out as gay. It's like a confession. Why confess? What's wrong? If you need to get married, you get married.

There is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about when they understand that celibacy is a desired goal. That's fine. There are a couple of temples in America, where actually they have created a culture for offering a Brahmacharya who wants to move out of the ashram.

They have a graduation ceremony for the Brahmacharya. Yes, that was the system. There were rites of passage and the rites of passage.

Remember, they're a celebration of spiritual progress. You've now finished one stage successfully. Now you move to the other positively.

Beautiful. A bit of misunderstanding. Now, coming back to ethics.

Just one minute about Brahmacharya. We'll complete that point. I was thinking of scriptural references.

Prabhupada does say that if somebody is a Brahmacharya and they continue lifelong, that is like tolerating an itch. That's like first class learning. Second class is a person who has to do it and learn it.

That is metaphorically speaking. But if somebody can do it lifelong, that means they eventually become sannyasis. So that's what you meant by conflating the Brahmacharya and sannyasi.

That if somebody is a Brahmacharya, then automatically it's almost like they are on the path to sannyas. And if they don't take that path, then they're doing something wrong. Something off went off.

So is that what you meant by the conflation? No, what I'm saying is partly to do with the orange cloth, which was introduced by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. In other words, the two have been seen as the same or very similar. And certainly, I mean, the sannyasa ashram is certainly above the grihastha ashram.

Yes. But the Brahmacharya ashram is not. So when you mix the two together, then one's value system becomes wrong.

Even it was seen as a fall down to get married. I cannot find any evidence for that view and the corresponding attitudes in our tradition. It's a deviation from our theology.

True. And coming back to ethics. Yeah.

The question is, where do we have free choice? Where do we not have free choice? If we try to exercise free choice, where we do not have it, it will be counterproductive. Because we are all sva-karma-jam. We are born with our nature.

You cannot change. There are certain things we cannot change in this lifetime while also becoming Krishna conscious, which raises a lot of questions which we may not be able to deal with here. Okay.

But, but, but, yeah, this is, but, sorry, is to conclude to continue this point about free will and destiny or free will and the scope for free will. So guilt might not just be because, say, I'm insincere, or I'm hypocritical. Guilt might be just because I am, I am presuming that I should be following a standard that is not my level right now.

Absolutely. That sense ethical, ethical understanding will decrease the guilt and then one can actually use the energy to do something to, to practice at the level when it is at and to rise to a higher level. Otherwise, that will choke oneself, will dishearten oneself and that can create problems.

Absolutely. I mean, obviously, a certain amount of disconsent with one's own moral and spiritual state is healthy. Oh, yes.

We all have to, yeah, but, but, you know, to be too complacent is obviously not healthy spiritually. But at the same time, if one is all, if one is riddled with toxic shame or guilt, that is also not healthy. And it's, by the way, it's had drastic constant consequences for some devotees.

So I think we need to look at some of those issues. And the issues of morality and ethics can be useful in almost having some ethical literacy, knowing what we're talking about. And I think actually, though, that that moral philosophy is there in our own tradition.

But I think we've missed it in many, I think, I think we've missed it in many ways. I think we're sidestepping it. We're favoring spirituality over morality.

We sometimes favor a kind of, what I say, a non-discourse, a non-biological approach to morality. Are we discussing morality explicitly? Or are we somehow sidestepping the issue? Very importantly, are we addressing the moral issues that quite naturally, are there in our own society? Or are we simply telling others how they should be moral? Beautifully. Because, because unless we're able to constructively and in the right forum, address our own challenges as a society and as individuals, we will not be effective.

True. So that means there are multiple dimensions to this. So one thing what we discussed was that if there's no proper ethical awareness or understanding, we could become either too guilty or too superficial or too even hypocritical ourselves.

And second is even within the devotee community, there could be an erosion of trust within our devotional relationships, if we see unethical behavior. And beyond that, we could look at the broader community also. And we can, we can do anti-preaching in a sense, if people find that we speak high philosophy, but then our actions are not even at a basic ethical level.

So, absolutely. All three domains could be there. And that last point which you mentioned, about telling people how to be moral, it is, there is seems to be a significant, what should I say, like, yaan isha sarva bhuta naam.

Krishna says what is day and night for different people is different. So, you talked about sexual ethics or sexual morality. There seems to be a very, almost aggressive divergence between the perception of morality around sexuality in today's world as compared to even a decade or two ago.

Like you talked about the, what would be the words that, that say, like you talk about coming out. So, a few years ago, or a few decades ago, generally, if somebody was not following certain standard ways of sexual engagement, then that was what was frowned upon. And, and if somebody is not following, that means they are morally lose or ethically lose, that was what was considered.

But now, in a sense, acceptance of different people, whatever way they want to express themselves sexually, that is not seen as a decline. That is seen at least in mainstream culture, the sharpening of the moral sensibility that, oh, you know, these people, this is the way they want to live. And then if somebody doesn't accept that, that is considered to be, that is, you are, you are, you don't have, you don't have basic human sense, you don't have moral sense.

So, the radical polarization, what you mentioned in your article also that, while in the past in 1970s, as devotees, there's a non-judgmental attitude, by which devotees were relatively able to be easily, not without so much difficulty, devotees, people could become devotees. But in today's world, also in technical, in technical sense, we accept being non-judgmental. But in principle, if somebody is not non-judgmental, today's culture is very judgmental about those who are not, those who are not non-judgmental, or those who are not pursued as non-judgmental.

Absolutely. This is the age-old, sometimes called the paradox of liberalism. In other words, you have this ideal of not judging, but we're going to put the Nazis in the gas chamber or shoot them.

And we call it, and we call everyone we don't like a fascist. The level of moral debate leaves much to be desired. And in the outside world, people are also recognizing that there's some challenge, not only in our, perhaps in our moral standards, but in the way that we address morality and the level of debate around morality and ethics.

It's problematic. I mean, and I think it's very important for us. By the way, I will say, I'm talking about being introspective about our own moral challenges.

But I will say my own experience of late made me think we're doing pretty well in some ways compared to what's going on, you could say, with non-devotees or those who are, or generally, without wanting to rigidly divide everyone up like that. There's a lot of worrying trends. One of the trends that has happened, and this has been happening for a long time, probably with the beginning of utilitarianism, is that ethics generally is something that is actually discussed in the social arena, the public arena.

And personal morality is now not considered that important. How you behave personally is not as important as how you treat others. Yes.

In other words, and this goes back to utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill and Bentham and so on, with the idea that actually, you have the right to deal with your own body, your own self and your own mind as you want, but you've got to be careful about dealing with others. So that, I think, had a significant effect on the development of morality. In fact, based on his philosophy, there were certain communities set up based on free love.

And today, when it comes to sexual morality, some hold, and there are academic articles on this, that actually consent is the only criterion for actually determining whether sexual activity is moral or immoral. Yeah. That's all it's about.

So actually, what we've done is we've moved, generally, morality away from a particular response, perhaps, or as a reaction against some Victorian thought, which tend to be rather puritanical and world negating and so on. We've moved towards a kind of, in a sense, quite hedonistic approach. Now, in ISKCON, it's interesting that we actually tend to look at morality in terms of the individual.

Just let me finish, and we're less interested in addressing the social issues. Oh, okay. That is the exact point I was making.

Yeah. So I never thought of utilitarianism as implying in this way, that utilitarianism, I had heard and read about it quite a bit. But the idea, what you said is utilitarianism means that nobody should control what I do with my body.

But if what I do with my body, with my things affects others, then that is where… Then it becomes immoral, yeah. Then society and legislation and other things come up. But… Absolutely.

So probably, this is the philosophical underpinning of the pro-life, pro-choice debate. So with respect to abortion also, that… Absolutely. So the presumption, because of this change in the way of looking at it, the presumption that as devotees we often have is that we are ethically better than others.

That presumption itself might be a suspect or question today. We may say that because we are following the four regulatory principles, so we are better than others. Now, in some… Yes, we could say that true, but not necessarily everybody will consider the following of four regulatory principles as a sign of ethical superiority.

In today's world… No, they won't. They will say that is just your free will. If somebody wants to, I don't want to do it, that's okay.

But if somebody wants to, that's not a problem. So their parameters for ethical superiority, for ethical caliber would be quite different from what we presume to be ethical. Absolutely.

And the issues they consider to be important will be different from the issues that we may consider important. What an important question. That's true.

The challenge, I think, that even though we… Well, that is one challenge that we're not looking at. It's gone at some of our internal social problems in order to address those outside with more integrity and more clout, if you like, more impact. I think another challenge is that we haven't really seen the four regulative principles in terms of the values associated with them and the virtues associated with them.

Our moral sensibility has been too restricted to what you might call temple attendance or sadhana. Now, I have no doubt about the contribution that personal sadhana and chanting the holy name makes to our moral development as well as our spiritual development, but we have rather tightly framed our understanding of what is morality and is gone. For example, when we take a vow to follow the four regulative principles, we're not only taking that vow to follow them, but we're also making a promise, I would suggest, to develop the corresponding virtues, cleanliness, mercifulness, truthfulness, and austerity.

Now, if we're developing those virtues, one would imagine those virtues will be exercised not just in the temple room before 8.30, but after 8.30 and in the wider world. And when we're taking the vow to chant 16 rounds, we're also making a promise, if you like, to develop krishna prema, and it's useful to examine whether that may not be termed a virtue or the highest virtue. Okay, so when we apply this positive framework, then the ambit of the four regulative principles becomes much broader.

And we could say that four principles we're talking about are like a ground level, it's a foundation, it's not the conclusion. And so in today's world, sensitivity is very important. So being sensitive to people who are having different sexual orientations or from different racial backgrounds, different cultural practices.

So would sensitivity come anywhere among these four regulative principles, even in the positive side, if we take it, would come under mercy, that accepting people where they are at? Absolutely. I mean, we can look at these virtues, and obviously, in moral discourse, there is the challenge of dilemmas, which, of course, is exemplified in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna's dilemma. But there's also the tensions, some of those dilemmas are actually tensions, not just between conduct, but between various virtues also.

We want to apply one virtue, but we may not be able to apply another. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay.

True. So the virtues, so yeah. So how, you know, what is that? I mean, and this is one big what I call ethical, I've mentioned a little bit some of the moral challenges we have, but the ethical challenges, and I use the words morality and ethics slightly differently, even some writers claim that they can be used synonymously.

There are different meanings for each. And generally speaking, even though some of the meanings are common, ethics refers, morality is about anything to do with right and wrong, or good and bad. Ethics, generally, or in some cases, some meanings, means the conscious consideration and application of moral principles.

Okay. Right. So it includes such things as moral philosophy.

Okay. It includes codes of conduct, more recently codes of conduct for medical ethics, business ethics, psychological ethics, and so on. So it's more a system and a structure of where one is actually deliberately critical of moral issues, one's thinking about those issues, and trying to develop systems to apply, apply them to improve our moral status and moral standing.

Okay. So I use in that sense, so when I talk about ethical issues, in ISKCON, there are some issues where we're uncertain, there's some issues where we know this is right, but we're not able to live up to it. And that happens to all of us in our lives.

Okay. Ethical issues, and I'm just using this somewhat according to my own definition, although it reflects some of the dictionary definitions of those issues where we're not sure what's right or wrong. Should we drink milk that's commercially produced and implicated in violence? Yeah, should we go vegan? There are ethical issues where we ourselves may be unsure.

So we discussed one thing was moral issues where we presume that we are at a higher level, or we expect that I should be at a higher level and feel guilty. So we might presume that we are at a higher level and may look down at others, or we expect that we should be at a higher level and look down at ourselves feel guilty. So that is more at a level where at least there's clarity about right and wrong, but ethics goes to where there is clarity.

Well, yeah, not quite. I mean, more simply, there are just issues. There is just the problem where we don't meet our own standards.

And that means we don't meet our standards individually, and we don't meet our standards collectively. And how do we deal with that? First, do we acknowledge it? Because it takes a certain amount of courage to acknowledge it. I'm not saying that individually or collectively, we have to tell the world all about it.

But we do have to somehow address that difference. So we always have to, in life, address that gap between, and you expressed it earlier, I think, in talking about dharma. And there's a famous moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, who said it's about where we are at the moment, and humans as they could be.

Of course, we don't quite see it as humans as they could be, we see it more in terms of spirit souls as we could be. Yeah. But still, put simply, we're here, we need to go there.

How are we going to transverse that path from where we are to where we need to be? Whether we see that in terms of morality or spirituality or something else, in one sense doesn't matter. But we do, if we're going to make progress in life, we have to acknowledge that. And we have to deliberately make the transition from one place where we are now, to where we're going.

And there's issues in that, there is the final goal, and there are the objectives or the steps that we take to get there. So first, there are moral issues we have to address, and we have to be equipped to deal with them, so that we don't address them aggressively and destructively. As you kind of alluded to, like on a political level, for example, or that we don't actually self-criticize or become too much, become involved in toxic shame or guilt, that actually stops our progress rather than impeding it.

So there are big issues about actually being open and having the correct conversation to enable us to go from where we are to where we need to be. So the moral issues, really, are those things where we know it's not working for some reason. We know that our, and here's an example of something which is more historical, our marriage record was not very good.

It's improving, and it's gone, thankfully. But, you know, our standards of marriage and divorce meet scriptural standards. How do we deal with that? We have to deal with it.

What about corruption in leadership? It's a problem. It may not be widespread, there may not be much of it, but there is a problem with it. How do we deal with it? There are a number of moral issues.

There's the sexuality issue, which is probably bigger than most of us think. So we want to avoid, you know, airing our laundry everywhere, but we also want to avoid ignoring these issues. The second challenge is what I call the ethical issues.

Those issues, controversies and debates, where we're not sure what is right and wrong. There is a third area that I'll just mention now, but we didn't discuss now, and that is the controversial statements in Sheila Prabhupada's books. Why are they relevant to ethics? Because it's the moral and ethical climate, the kind of surrounding environment of ideas about what is right and what is wrong, or what is good and what is evil, has changed since the 1960s.

The moral discourse changes, the moral philosophy, the academic moral philosophy changes, the populist discourse, or the popular discourse changes as well. That has also had a big impact on ISKCON, particularly the reception of Sheila Prabhupada's, some of his statements on women, race, science, and so on. That's the third issue, which is more, I would say, I suggest they're probably more hermeneutical issues.

But ethics and developing ethical literacy, knowing what's happening, having some insight into what is happening in the world, as well as what's happening in ISKCON, perhaps, is useful for us taking the society forward. So I've got those three ethical, those three kind of practical challenges, which I will suggest, encourages us to become a little more literate in what we mean by ethics. I'm not necessarily suggesting that all of us need to study Western moral philosophy, although I think there's good reason to do so for many of us.

I am also suggesting that within our tradition, there is a lot of moral insight. But for some reason, both the Hindu tradition broadly, if I can call it that, or the Vedic tradition, call it what you will, and the Chaitanya Vaishnav tradition, appears to have been a bit reticent about dealing with moral issues, and seems to have favoured both spiritual discourse, and also talking about metaphysical or ontological truths, the self, the nature of the self, the nature of God, and so on. However, I think that many of us have missed the moral and ethical strands, if you like, that are running through texts such as the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita is a moral text, essentially, in many ways. Now, the relationship between values, and moral sensibility, and moral sense, and metaphysical truth, or your ontological truths, or facts and cognition, is a long-standing debate. The relationship between a fact, and it started particularly with David Hume, who suggested they were quite distinct, that values and facts are distinct.

And so, there's a huge debate going on there. So, I'm suggesting there are three practical issues, kind of ongoing phenomena, that would make it useful for us to develop our own one. I think, well, I've made three points in my essay.

First, we need to look at the issues of morality and ethics. Second, to do that, we need to be educated how to do that. And there may be courses on this.

I think it'd be useful to have training courses, particularly for administrative leaders, and I can come back to that. And thirdly, it would be good for us to develop a somewhat autonomous moral philosophy, or moral theology. When I say semi-autonomous, it kind of stands, it is a moral philosophy, and it stands somewhat separate from other aspects of Krishna conscious theology, because we tend to, at times, often lump it all together as one theology.

But I think it's, my understanding is, particularly in the modern world, and I think Srila Prabhupada alludes to this, we need a Krishna conscious, well, I say moral philosophy. We need a philosophy of education. We need a philosophy of management and leadership.

We need to know what Krishna consciousness says on psychology. How about counseling? Could we develop a whole discipline of Krishna conscious counseling that is really structured and disciplined, but not taking on some of the negative elements of contemporary thought? How about economics? Should we know something about, how about cow protection? Do we need to draw together and codify Srila Prabhupada's teachings, rather, so that actually we can draw on those, what I would call Krishna conscious disciplines, which are coherent and comprehensive, and useful for certain, particularly specialists in those fields, rather than just having a kind of amorphous Krishna conscious theology. Amorphous Krishna conscious theology, that's a very striking.

Sorry, I'm not, yeah, I don't, I'm not being disparaging towards our theology, but I think, and I'm not saying that these disciplines are not connected. I think in the western, this way, in the western world, the disciplines have been divided up, and therefore in the academy and universities and colleges, very often they exist in their own world. So theology is one world, religious studies is another, for example, and then you've got the sciences and so on and so forth, and architecture, economics, and the whole range.

And they've got their own disciplines, their own types of research, and perhaps they don't, I mean, there's a move towards more interdisciplinary work. However, I would suggest that perhaps in India and in Indic thought, maybe it's a little too monistic. We need to actually separate out some of the teachings and develop, as I said before, what I would call a range of Krishna conscious humanities or disciplines or fields of study.

Yeah, for practical purposes. So, this is a lot of, what we should say, lot of area of, lot of area of contemplation and application, which is where we presume understanding and certainty. So, if you have courses, especially for those who are, as I said, in leadership positions, and that will also help us to be more, to not come off as so otherworldly or impractical in today's world, isn't it? Otherwise, sometimes that is one perception that comes, that is a devotee, even nice people, but now what you're saying is not practical or it's too transcendental or too otherworldly.

So, as devotees, we may not say this about our practices, but for many people, Krishna consciousness doesn't seem to be addressing any of the urgent issues that preoccupy the mainstream mind in today's world. And preoccupy many of us devotees as well. By the way, let's be, let's be frank.

By the way, the, you know, the practice of Krishna consciousness, the sadhana, the temple attendance, that's all important. However, what concerns me is what I call the kind of reductionism that's going on in Shila Prabhupada's philosophy. An example of this might be that we end many of the classes with, but in Kali Yuga, it's not possible, just chant Hare Krishna.

Now, I don't think that Shila Prabhupada dedicated so many hours to translating the Bhagavad Gita, and the Srimad Bhagavatam particularly, sorry, the Srimad Bhagavatam was discussing, with the idea that we're going to reject some of it. That's amazing. There are instructions on all areas of, worthy areas of human endeavor, and we ignore them at our peril.

And I think one thing that is clear to me, and I'm going to make this statement quite strongly, because I think that morality is very closely linked, or dharma, if you liked, to the administrative leadership, the Chakryas, because it was they who were responsible for establishing and maintaining the basic moral ethos of the society, in which spiritual life could flourish. Yeah, you know, if you consider, you mentioned earlier about Gaudiya Vaishnavism, that the whole way, say, the devotees in Bengal are living, or the devotees in Orissa are living, they are able to live because there is a foundation of Varanashram, that there is a whole socio-cultural, socio-economic structure is arranged in such a way that, say, Advaita Acharya can be just doing Harinam Sankirtan for most of the time. And they can travel for four months and go to Yoganathpuri and live there.

So, a certain level of social organization, this is a good example, Chaitanya Charitamruta builds on the social structure that is already there. And trying to live that, that kind, that way, without having that social structure, we don't have it in today's world, but then what to do, that is quite a, that is a challenge in itself, which we can't, which we can't, we can't deny. It's a challenge.

So, the statement I'm going to make is this, without effective governance, ISKCON will not go forward. Without successful governance, there will be no successful ISKCON. By governance, you're talking about means governance of ISKCON by ISKCON itself? Is that what you're referring to? Absolutely, yes.

And of course, if we want to look at the salvation of the world, it would have to extend there as well. Yeah. In other words, Krishna consciousness really struggles if it's going to operate in a cultural vacuum or a social vacuum.

It can't, you know, a kind of disembodied spirituality will not work. Disembodied spirituality, that's a beautiful way of putting it. So, just as the soul needs a body to function while it is in the material world.

So, similarly, we need… You need some kind of body. It could be your spiritual body, but the spiritual body has form as well. Where's this idea that the spiritual doesn't have form, it's systematic? And everything kind of goes on vaguely through a kind of impersonal Krishna delivered energy.

No, everything has to be systematic. Our education has to be systematic. Just because the materialists are systematic and organized, it doesn't mean we should be the opposite.

Quite the contrary. We're personalists. It is no good decrying education as a slaughterhouse.

Which I agree, it is often. But unless we come up with a better educational system, what use is our critique? And this is part of the problem. And this is one thing that Nietzsche criticized of religious people and particularly Christianities.

I think he was a little harsh, but he made some very good observations. They are more concerned to criticize others than to set the example themselves. And that we have to avoid.

But that we have to avoid. It has to be practical. It has to be built.

We have to build a Krishna conscious society. We have to build a Krishna conscious culture. I don't think it exists.

I mean, there are remnants that exist in Bengal and Bangladesh, and they may be very valuable. But I don't think we have a complete Krishna conscious culture that will take us forward for the next few centuries and millennia. I think that has to be discovered or created, if you like.

But I don't think that Krishna consciousness will go forward well unless it does that. In other words, we should be more concerned in my mind, not with our own liberation, but with actually building the systems, structures, and so on, that will enable future generations to actually avail themselves of Krishna consciousness. That, I feel, should be our meditation.

So that Krishna consciousness goes beyond a small religion to become something far greater. So I think Srila Prabhupada's book has those instructions. But if we limit our focus to the spiritual practices, as valuable and as important as they are, and I'm not saying ignore those, but unless we go beyond, I don't think we'll go forward.

And I'll make one other observation about governance. And I think this is really important. Because actually, the path from where we are to where we need to go has been carefully delineated by the Goswamis from Shraddha to Prem.

It's very clear. So unless if the Shraddha, the faith and the trust is broken, one cannot, or it'll be very difficult to progress, perhaps it's impossible, to the next stage. And that trust is mediated through devotees, but it's mediated not just through the guru or the education, the teacher.

It is also mediated through administrative leadership. They also build or erode trust. And we need to recognize that without virtuous leadership.

By the way, I think this truth extends everywhere, not just in Iskcon, the need for virtuous leadership. It's kind of something goes back to Plato. Without virtuous leadership, it's going to be very difficult to take Krishna consciousness forward.

That's a very striking point. So what you're saying is that Shraddha, it's not necessary that it will be developed just by the practice of bhakti. Or rather, we could say that my individual practice of bhakti and the realizations that I get by that by studying scripture, by chanting, by going to holy places.

This makes it very clear that our what you said earlier, we are focused more on the individual practice part. But in general, whenever devotees have some faith crisis, sometimes it may be, how do I understand the 5th Kanto cosmology? Or how do I understand this particular point? But more often, the faith crisis come from social issues. Absolutely.

Yes, yes. So absolutely. Yeah.

Some of the social issues are, like say, leaders having some difficulties in ethical standards. But sometimes it could just be that some leaders, in order to get things done, they become a little, they adopt the approach of the means just and justify the means. And that's what causes a lot of damage to faith.

So this way, that means we could say that actually, creating a ethically conducive environment is an important part of nourishing the Bhakti Lata Beach. That an environment where people can actually do Shravan Kirtan, which will nourish the faith. Absolutely, we need to, you know, it's very, I mean, we should keep in goal, in mind, goal of Prema.

And we could discuss that more. I think it's very important, what I call the virtue of love, and other philosophers have said, how this should be put at the forefront of our moral practices and our moral discourse. But we should also keep in mind that if we actually are hacking away at the root of the tree of Bhakti, at the beginning, Shraddha, then actually, we're not going to get that far.

We need to give attention that we're building that faith and trust in Krishna consciousness. And it's a communal process. We're not individual practitioners who retire to the Himalayas.

We practice Krishna consciousness individually, but also as part of a community. And therefore, those communal issues and building a community of devotee or communities of devotees is really essential. And those communities of devotees will interact with the broader community in the world.

So I don't think that these issues can be avoided if we're to be effective in pushing forward Krishna consciousness. And I would suggest that kind of, I mean, Srila Prabhupada does in the first canto mention the importance, particularly of the Brahmins. And he says explicitly at the end of one verse, and I don't have the reference, excuse me.

If the Chakras and the Brahmins work together, everything else will fall into place. And there has to be that mutual trust between those two divisions of leadership. And of course, Kali Yuga began with the breakdown of that relationship.

The story of Pariksit Maharaj and what was the name of the Brahmin or his son, the cursing of Pariksit Maharaj. Sringi. Sringi.

Absolutely. Yes. See how it was.

See how that heralded the beginning of Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga. Yeah.

So now the ethical environment needs to be set. You're saying at one level, say, the Brahmanas could provide the culture for, provide the resources of the culture for hearing and chanting and practicing bhakti per se. But it is also the responsibility of the Kshatriyas to have an environment where bhakti can be practiced.

Yes. And if the two of them are cooperating, then things can move forward smoothly. Absolutely.

Yes. And the Brahmins, they were concerned for their own upliftment. They're independent.

They don't need a society. They're not dependent on the society. But for the welfare of everyone, they understood the need for good governance.

In the Vedic concept, a good king. But that means, if we look at that in context, what it means generally, broadly in today's world included good governance. Therefore, the Brahmins, when King Vena was going off the rails a little bit.

And they shouldn't, they wouldn't normally have done this. They don't normally employ violence. So, when Vishwamitra Muni came, was having problems with some demons, he came to Dasharath Maharaj and asked him for Ram and Lakshman to go and kill the demons, because the Brahmins should never engage in violence.

But in the case of King Vena, the Brahmins actually ended up cursing him and killing him directly. And Srila Prabhupada, in one lecture when discussing that, even though it appeared that they transgressed their brahminical duties in terms of conduct and rules, he says, this shows they were real Brahmins. They were so concerned for the welfare of the people that they were prepared to transgress the rules and regulations.

But the purport is that they knew the importance of having good governance. There needs to be a social system and a healthy, you know, society in which Krishna consciousness can then flourish. And there are some direct quotes on this.

Srila Prabhupada makes it. So, now if we consider the individual level, if some devotees want to become more ethically, you could say, literate. One resource could be, of course, reading.

We will share the link of the paper which you have given. Another could, and there also you give many references from our traditions. So, do you see any overall progress happening in this direction? Are our devotees engaging in this kind of discussions and are some resources available that you know of? Yeah, yes, certainly.

I think there are many positive developments. I think devotees are becoming aware of these issues. They're becoming conscious of the need to address them rather than to ignore them.

Particularly, I think, amongst the communications, ISKCON communications community, there is awareness amongst the GBC itself. There is awareness particularly of the some of the hermeneutical issues and the problematic statements of Srila Prabhupada. And therefore, they've actually commissioned the Shastri Advisory Committee to develop and publish a course and course materials on hermeneutics and how we interpret Srila Prabhupada's books.

And of course, in hermeneutics, there is a strong ethical element running throughout. I think there's a lot of awareness going on. There's a lot of positive signs.

I think there's also a negative, some negative developments, such as defining ISKCON as a religion, ascertaining our ethical and moral status according to the country or race we belong to, whether it's the divide between India and the West, or whether it's simply us saying that we're good and all non-devotees are bad. In other words, what we're doing is we're developing a tendency. There's the tendency now within ISKCON, and I don't think it was there in the early days, to actually evaluate a person's moral status according to material designation.

The challenge here is that to answer Arjuna's dilemma, Krishna's first statement was on the existence of the eternal soul and understanding that identity beyond all bodily designations. This is a challenge. Yeah, but true.

So, you said that as compared to earlier, the polarization is becoming more, you're saying? I thought that it is becoming lesser, in the sense that in the past, our movement was mostly temple-based, and now it has become congregation-based. So, the idea that different devotees will, that I don't see in many parts of ISKCON today that spiritual advancement equated with temple residence or temple attendance alone. I thought much more earlier, when they're practically moving out of the temple, was equated with falling down.

But now, I don't think that's happening. Unless, of course, somebody moves out. No, I'm saying there's progression in certain areas, but there may be regression in others.

For example, now there are kind of tensions between East and West, hmm, and Indian perspectives and Western perspectives. The idea that, for example, sometimes, I think some of the problems stem from both sides. So, I know some of us Westerners are critical of Hinduism in a very harsh way, and there are those kind of claims to non-sectarianism, which in themselves are valid, but which raise certain questions about what actually is our connection to India.

Why is India important for us, or is it not important? If it is important, why is it important? Without descending into some form of nationalism. So, there are some tensions. There are some tensions, I think.

Okay. And you are saying this as an ethical issue. I thought that it is more of an issue of, say, conservatives and liberals, and it is something which is integral to every tradition.

But, I mean, of course, this could be a big discussion itself. But I'm just trying to understand how you are seeing this as an ethical issue. For example, social justice concerns are much more in the West, and so certain statements of Srila Prabhupada or certain stands of our movement, they will come under far more critical examination in the West.

And they may be, relatively speaking, non-issues in India. And when they are made into issues, then some problem may come up. I'm just trying to see the ethical connection with this.

Yeah, a number of points, a number of kind of responses come to mind. First, the relationship between morality and governance is an important one. Also, the relationship between morality and the law, since governments are those who actually, with the help of the judiciary, decide on the law.

The connection between morality and ethics is much debated, although I take the stance, and some disagree, that actually first comes your moral philosophy, and then comes your governance and your legislation that tries to ensure that people become moral. So there's a close connection between governance and morality, between moral philosophy and law. What else is important there? Oh, yes, and therefore, there's quite a close connection between political philosophy and moral philosophy as well.

Okay. That's quite a thought-provoking way of looking at this. So, rather than seeing the cultural or national polarization, we could say in simply conservative liberal terms, because in one sense, I don't know how much those terms apply for our movement, because even the most liberal devotee would be considered ultra-conservative conservative from the mainstream's perspective.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I'd be careful about too much generalization there, actually.

I mean, there is a connection, and there's been writings on this. I mean, for example, the right wing will tend to emphasize people becoming responsible. The left wing will actually point to issues of determinism, and how there are mitigating circumstances, and they're being forced into crime through poverty.

The right wing will respond to that and say, poverty doesn't force you into crime. There's always a degree of free will. Yeah.

So there's definitely connections between political leanings and one's stance. And certain moral philosophers, Jonathan Haidt has written on this. But I don't think, I think we have to, I think it's very important that we recognize the link between governance and morality.

I think there's a strong connection. I would also suggest that we need to look at it in the realm of education, probably by, I would suggest, placing values and character formation very high up in our educational processes, and understanding that Krishna consciousness is not so much a transcendence of character formation. It is part of the process of character formation.

It's the uncovering of the values and virtues and dispositions that are inherent within the self. Okay, so what that would mean is that, I don't think anybody would say that character formation, that devotion is transcendental character formation. But what might happen is that we may have a little limited vision of character itself.

If we see a character flaw as flawing, following four regular principles alone, and not anything else. So we might need to expand our definition of what a good character means, and what a character flaw means. Yes, absolutely.

And I think if I may go on, one area in which I is a challenge, is that we tend to very much highlight the devotional virtues, but we largely ignore the virtues that are associated with a specific station in life, by which I mean particular varnas and ashrams, according to our worldview. And the danger here is that if we don't give attention to the values which are inevitably yoked to our particular varna and ashram, then we can slip and slide, often opportunistically, at least irresponsibly, between the various values. And therefore, as I alluded to earlier, we can become irresponsible.

And I gave the example of an administrative leader. An administrative leader may accept power when it comes to a position. But an administrative leader, if a dependent has a problem, can't legitimately then take the role of a brahman and simply give instruction.

He has a duty to provide for his dependents, and particularly to protect five classes of society, women, children, cows, the elderly, and the brahmans. And then, when it comes to meetings, whatever is financially lucrative, will make that decision. Now, you know, of course, these things are important.

We need to give instruction. We need also to have financial stability. Absolutely important.

And in many places, ISKCON has developed that stability now. But what are the values attributed to each? And Chanukah warns about this. He tells us that some of the values are antithetical.

They're the opposite. Yeah, this is true. For example, Prabhupada says in a purport that a person, when they're old, they should just take sannyas and not bother about anything else, be fearless.

Even if they're eaten by a tiger in the jungle, they should know that the Lord is there in their heart. So, in one sense, that is for the individual to take responsibility for one's spiritual advancement. But at the same time, the society has an ethos that we should take care of the elderly.

So, if we take this to an isolation, if we're taking care of the elderly, we wouldn't want them to just go out alone into a forest and die in a secluded place. We'd want to offer support systems. So, in some ways, there could be a tension.

But if we recognize what is the purpose of each, the purpose of both is, on one side, to inspire individual spiritual responsibility and to also provide a collective spiritual facility. And that can apply not just for spiritual, it can also apply for, in general, our functional or, as I said, economic or other needs also. So, both the liberal and the liberal concerns about, as I said, social responsibility and conservative concerns about individual responsibility.

Both, there are scriptural statements which acknowledge the role for both. But maybe we have one and neglected the other. Yeah, and certainly one of the problems in modern discourse, and I'm talking about the world in general, is the polarization of thought.

The adoption of binary thought, where it's either one or the other, a lack of dialectical thought. Remember that our actual philosophy, as Chaitanya Vaishnavas, as Gaudiya Vaishnavas, is a cincha-bheda-bheda-tattva, the resolution of opposites. On one hand, we say it's inconceivable.

On the other hand, we explain it, which is quite interesting as well. I won't go into that. I just think that's an interesting point to discuss more.

But this idea of resolving opposites through insight and full realization is an important pedagogical and spiritual principle. And Srila Prabhupada mentions it explicitly. He says, if you're just on the intellectual level, you will not be able to resolve conflicts and tensions, apparent opposites, apparent paradoxes.

But once you realize that, once you attain the level of realization, they can be resolved. Now, on the social level, if we start to adopt the prevalent Kali Yuga mode of adversarial discourse, competitive discourse, discourse which is fueled by often unrestrained emotions and sentiments, there at least has to be a group of thinkers who are personally detached. Not detached from the welfare of others, but personally detached, so that they can actually explore the various issues.

Because although Krishna consciousness in some ways is simple, its application is difficult. We live in a complex world. The Mahabharata is full of complex moral dilemmas.

Arjuna was in a moral dilemma. We can't stay on the level of just simply rules and rites and rituals and conformative belief in a very narrow sense. It won't work.

We need a class of devotees who are able to discuss these issues soundly and resolve these issues and then implement them on a social level, administrative level, so that everyone benefits. It may not be that everyone could be engaged in this conversation on a very deep level, but it must happen. Sorry, I've said too much.

No, not too much. I think there's a lot of thought, food for thought. So maybe I'll just make one or two questions and then we can try to conclude.

I had a couple. When I said earlier about the most liberal and the most conservative, what I meant was that, yes, there are certain universal concerns which will animate whether we as devotees or non-devotees, they will animate everyone, but they will underlie everybody's thought process. But say, for example, with respect to our ideas about, say, some devotees, liberal devotee would be, a devotee says that, you know, you can wear a particular kind of dress or those who are of a particular sexual orientation, they also need the space to practice bhakti.

That would be considered liberal. But from the world's perspective, that the very question like this is coming, that itself indicates a certain level of conservativeness. That it's not only something which is considered self-evident, but it's something to be celebrated.

Yes, everybody can dress the way they want, everybody can express themselves sexually the way they want. So in that sense, what I was drawing at, that the liberal conservative, that polarized thinking or binary thinking, instead of succumbing to that binary thinking by using that terminology, if we could look at it as an ethical issue, then the things become, we can see them in a less conflict inducing light. Interesting.

I think I like what you say there. In other words, we kind of reframe the question so that we avoid the dichotomy. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly. In general, one way I understood the, because you mentioned Jonathan Haidt also, what I read his book, The Righteous Mind.

So one thing which it struck to me is that, in general, conservatives seem to be more concerned about systems and keeping the systems in place by which people can rise individually. Whereas when you work hard, you take responsibility, you rise, and the systems have helped people rise in the past. So preserve the systems.

So in one sense, conservatives are a little more concerned about systems so that people can take responsibility. Whereas liberals are more concerned about whether the systems themselves are working or not, and that maybe the system needs to be changed so that people can rise. So it's not so much that both want everybody to be benefited.

But what is the means for benefiting? Is it inspiring people to take more responsibility within the existing systems? Or whether it is to be activists to change the systems so that people can rise more easily? So we could frame that within our movement as we focus more on saying that the system is system, there is no need to question it. System is perfect. All that you need to do is just become more serious about your sadhana, more serious about your morning program or things like that, which is of course valid.

But also, like you said, do we even have a system right now in place for ethical discourse or even ethical discourse or ethical contemplation? So yes, we are not denying the importance of sadhana. But along with that, maybe a system also needs to be in place. Otherwise, different devotees may come up with, we may stay in ethical, what is the word you use, reductionism, like some of you say, like amorphous theology, where we just assume that we have answers to these questions without really thinking, without really thinking deeply even about the what about what the issues are.

Absolutely. Yes. And so generally, at the end of the podcast, I try to summarize and maybe after summarizing, if you want to give some concluding words, you can add those words.

Will that be okay? Okay. So today we discussed about the importance of ethics in bhakti, broadly speaking. So I think the major part we discussed that at a personal, so broadly three levels you mentioned, at a level of personal application, at the level of say, interpersonal application within the devotee community, and another level is interacting with the broader world.

So when you say that spirituality is above morality, that it is two ways it is negative. One is we seem to say that spirituality is itself morally void. And also that morality also is spiritually bankrupt.

It's not necessarily either way like that. And to frame the to frame that discussion, you started about your own journey. And you mentioned about how when you started getting into education, then you learned the pedagogical principle, which you found was a striking and universal that is knowledge, skills and values.

The knowledge is more about knowing, knowing, doing and being skills is doing. And to some extent, what these can be seen as someone that with their progeny, or they can be seen as staircase steps upward, one by one. Sometimes we emphasize the upper steps of the yoga ladder so much that even when we go up, we almost break down the lower ones, or we break down without even going up so that we leave ourselves stranded down.

And if we see all of these as accumulative, cumulative, then as progressive and cumulative, then we will give you importance to these. And within our tradition, also, there is a lot of discussion of dharma, not just about bhakti and prema. So somehow, we seem to have missed it out.

And we discussed various reasons for that. Said one is the Prabhupada presumed that the devotees would have some basic understanding, but they did not. And then also, there was some overemphasis on renunciation as compared to engagement in the world.

There was so that led to certain amount of equalization, presumption of moral agency or free will where that was not that were not necessarily have been there. So that leads, so if we do not have this ethical discourse, we do not become ethically literate, then either we cannot ourselves, we deal with too much guilt, and we cannot become, we cannot be real or we dismiss others. Rather than we becoming moral, we tell others how to become moral.

And then that also alienates people. So that was one aspect of discussion. Then two more aspects out of this.

Second, we discussed somewhat about ethical morality is more about doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing once we know it. But ethics, the way you explained it, it's a system of analysis, wherein actually focus on understand, you need to discern what is right and wrong also. So a few issues like say, should take a devotee stake, industry produced milk, or some other issues like that.

So for that, we need to understand the ethical issues, which we presume we know, but we may not know. And another reason why we need to focus on the social situation also is that, it's what is the third thing that, that Prabhu, that in today's world, the world has changed so much that, that it people are quite, the paradox of liberalism is, people are very judgmental about those who are not judgmental, who are not non-judgmental. So some of Prabhupada's statements and some of our social stance can be seen as not just wrong, or not just backward, but as morally wrong.

And we need to be able to analyze them carefully. So this is more of a hermeneutical issue, but still it needs to be addressed. And then with respect to, I think a key point which you brought in was effective governance is essential for the practice of bhakti.

And this governance, there is striking correlation that shraddha is not just developed by one's individual practice, but also by the way the devotee community is administered and affairs are conducted over there. In fact, practically speaking, most of the reasons devotees lose faith is because of these issues itself, the interpersonal, the managerial, and other such issues. So that means for those who are in leadership or administering positions, they need to be ethically literate, and they can take proper decisions.

So it's like Bhakti Lata Beach, you want to water it at one level, the hearing and chanting is a part of watering it. But the other part is that to have an environment where that hearing and chanting can happen in an undistracted, peaceful way. So then, so you said that there are several areas where hinges are happening in the sense that a lot more awareness and ethical nuance as contrasted to ethical reductionism of the past.

But there is still, so some more work is required. We discussed a little bit about the conservative liberal issues, and how some extent because of the seems to be resurfacing the bodily misconception or bodily identification because of which, say, East and West or India and West that kind of polarization happening. But if we reframe that as an ethical issue, then maybe we can avoid the binary thinking and go deeper and come towards some resolutions.

And then a couple of points which towards the end you mentioned was that there are adequate resources within our tradition itself for ethical reflection, even if devotees don't want to go outside. But there is a lot of deliberation on Dharma in the Mahabharata. The Bhagavad Gita itself is an ethical text at one level.

And there are lots of, we can, if we read the scripture like Chaitanya Charitamrita, it's clear that there is a foundation of Dharma because of which bhakti can be practiced easily. So how that, that, so while as a moment we have emphasized individual responsibility, in terms of devotees practicing bhakti more, more adequately, but the social responsibility in terms of the leadership to create that environment, how that can be done. So the Brahmanas will be doing the teaching.

But in one sense, Kshatriyas, how they manage so that the ethical environment is maintained, that is something which is quite important. And then earlier, we also made, you made this point, which we came back towards the end, is that when we are practicing bhakti, there is, if we exalt only the devotional values and not ashram specific values, then the… Varanasi specific. Sorry, Varanasi specific values.

Okay, Varanasi specific and ashram specific also you could say. The ashram also can be compared with the social body. So the, there's a conflation of the brahmachari and brahmachari sannyasa ashrams can make people feel unnecessarily that they have to come out, that they are falling away, falling down when they change their ashram.

So if we have the ashram specific values, then due attention can be given to that and that can also help in, help in both devotees being able to practice more peacefully and joyfully as well as we being able to reach out to more people who will not see us as puritanical, judgmental, but we'll see that we are also reflective people who can give reasoned stance. So that was a point about reasoning. So critical thinking or heartfelt introspection to analyze how much we we are living, what we are doing, how much we actually realize what we are speaking and whether what we are speaking is simply like a formulaic repetition or it is a, it is we understand this is the right thing for this person at this point and we share that.

So the aspect of ethics, it seems to permeate, like you said, values permeate the knowing knowledge and the skills. So similarly, it seems the ethics can permeate almost the entire gamut of a devotee's life from the personal, institutional as well as the social. That's true.

You want to add anything in conclusion? No, that was very well summarized. I'm astounded how you remembered so much of our discussion. I will say that at some point it might be good to discuss, it might be useful to discuss the idea of the three gunas, the three gunas, the three gunas, Satvaguna, Rajaguna and Tamoguna, because I think they provide a framework which is very systematic and I think very insightful that transcends any particular particularities, particularly those connected to race, nation, culture and so on.

And in teaching in schools, some devotee teachers have noted how non-devotees can also get to grips with the three guna and are actually quite fascinated by it as a framework for understanding life and also for understanding moral issues. And I think actually that is one thing that we need to look at a little more carefully and particularly the need to reach the stage of Satvaguna before we become Krishna conscious. I'm not saying that Krishna consciousness is not the cause of us reaching Satvaguna, but still unless we've reached, I'm not saying that we have to change the cause, the process, but we do have to reach Satvaguna before we can actually attain transcendence.

And that is mentioned in the very first verse of the very first chapter of the very first canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Srila Prabhupada explicitly mentions how Vyasadeva has invoked a Gayatri mantra so that we can reach dhimahi, so that we can reach goodness before we enter into the Lord's lila. And that is also something that needs discussing the role of the three guna.

Bhaktivinoda Thakur has even mentioned that rajaguna is a, albeit temporary, antidote to tamaguna. It helps us, even raguna could be helpful. And I really think that way that some devotees dismiss the three guna and particularly the way they conflate without much discernment, rajaguna and tamaguna, which are quite different, is unhelpful in the discourse.

But perhaps we can discuss that at another time. Yeah. And, you know, I just made a lot of points.

Maybe we'll just elaborate one or two because we need a whole discussion on this. So, okay. And we love a lot of importance of Satvaguna and practicing bhakti.

In India also, there is a sattvic movement, which is sattvic in lifestyle, sattvic in food, sattvic in various products that we use, become quite influential. So, interesting. So, so, so that, so the, in one sense, the modes can give you give us a universal framework for looking at things without the presumption or presumptuousness, if you want to use the word that might come because of we are devotees and they are non devotees.

So, absolutely. Yeah, I think, let's, let's plan it out. And I would love to have a further discussion on this topic.

Thank you. Let's do that. It's been a pleasure.

It is very, I would say, paradigm expanding to recognize the, the pervasive aspect of pervasive role or pervasive influence of ethics in a, in a devotee's life. Thank you very much. Thank you, Prabhu.

Thank you for your association. Shall I just read this bit now or shall we leave it for the next time? You can read it now. Indeed, a Chaitanya Vaishnav ethics might assist the society's outreach by broadening its interest base and establishing its relevance.

There is a case for suggesting that dharma, central to ISKCON's identity, is better translated as ethics, albeit theistic, rather than religion, which may or may not be ethical. Ethical literacy might also facilitate confident redress of the society's natural shortcomings. We have also earmarked obligation to attend to the moral narrative, especially to resist a predilection towards self and world negation and a moral discourse that tacitly approves monistic and nihilistic views.

This may be the natural consequence of constraining morality as necessarily material, thus inferring in transcendence a moral void. On the contrary, morality and virtue may be expressions, even when imperfect, of a bountiful and generous love for Krishna. What may be fitting then is not a transcendence of ethics, but a transcendental ethics.

Indeed, the Bhagavad Purana commends bhakti as the highest dharma. Srimad-Bhagavatam, canto 1, chapter 2, verse 6. Furthermore, love may be the highest virtue. An insight not exclusive to Vaishnavism, British Irish philosopher, Iris Murdoch, affirms, and I quote, we need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

In asserting love as a virtue, and yet its paradoxical transcendence of virtue, Comte Sponville writes, and I quote again, love commits us to morality and frees us from it. Morality commits us to love, even in its absence, and must yield before it. My proposal is that devotees acknowledge such insights, and furthermore, that Chaitanya's fifth telos, or goal of life, prema, be accommodated within a coherent moral philosophy, despite its surpassing morality's lower, selfish, and binding expressions.

Thank you, Prabhu. So, that's beautiful, Prabhu. I'll share a link to this article also, and what we have discussed over here, what we have given over here is, we discussed some of the topics, but a lot of beautiful play of words, not just play of words, but insightful play of words, transcendence of ethics and transcendental ethics.

And so, love, what is this, it's also amazing, love commits us to morality and frees us from it. And morality commits us to love even in its absence. These are amazing insights.

Thank you very much. Prabhu, thank you very much. Thank you for your time and your association.

Oh, thank you. I look forward to associating once again. Okay.

Jai Shilpa Prabhupada. Jai Shilpa Prabhupada.